The present invention relates to an idle address controller for a shared buffer type asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch, and more particularly, to an idle address controller for a shared buffer type asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch which can directly store common memory addresses of output cells in an idle address buffer by improving a conventional idle address control scheme of a unit switch.
Conventional limited shared buffer type ATM switches are controlled so that a common memory address of an output cell, which is read from a common memory is temporarily stored in an idle address delay controller and then is sent to an idle address buffer. However, since an idle address is not sent to the idle address buffer directly, the idle address may not be allocated, and thus it may disable the idle address from accessing the common memory, although the memory space where the idle address can be stored is available in the common memory. In addition, a large capacity memory is required for this idle address delay controller.